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Saturday, April 9, 2016

Review: Caliban - Gravity

German metalcore band Caliban recently released their 10th album, “Gravity”, and promote it as their “heaviest album ever”. Well, let’s see…

Overall, the record is an example of well-done metalcore, with the typical aggression in the songs Caliban are known for. This s already reflected in the opener “Paralyzed”: lots of variation, brutal riffs and drums and aggressive shouts mark this a strong track. Especially the chorus with the clean singing of Andreas Dörner creates a very dense atmosphere. Unfortunately, this trend is already discontinued in the next track, “Mein schwarzes Herz”. Starting off rather brutal, it then drifts off into pure kitsch. This is due to the lyrics, but definitely aggravated by the female background vocals. Weird. Fortunately, in my opinion, this is the only major failure on the entire record. The remainder of songs is mostly on the brutal side, such as “Walk alone”, “Who am I” and “For we are forever”, the latter being the strongest track on the entire album, due to awesome chants by Andreas Dörner and guitar riffs. The album in general has a wider range of emotions, also reflected by the powerballad “brOKen”, or the emotional chorus on “Hurricane”.

In conclusion: “Gravity” is a very good album, which will especially persuade fans of metalcore. The band’s statement that this would be their heaviest record ever is not entirely true in my opinion, as it’s both in intensity and style very similar to “Ghost Empire” – a piece of work with the trademark Caliban written over it. Nothing new for these German guys, but it will satisfy any Caliban-fan and is definitely worth listening to, so give it a shot! 8/10.